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Rip Off Ibiza?

The local press “Diario de Ibiza” yesterday printed a big article about Airbnb and the exorbitant prices being advertised to tourists for renting unlicensed rooms, houses, caravans, tents, and dormitories amongst other things.

Vicent Torres “Benet”, head of Ibiza tourism, is promising a crackdown on this kind of tourism but it’s a simple case of supply and demand and a free market will always dictate the prices. If he wants to stop people being ‘ripped off’ is he also going to crackdown on the prices that clubs charge for entrance and drinks?

Tourists are happy to pay as long as the end justifies the means and in Ibiza we have a product that the traveller seems willing to pay for. The price of property is rocketing too so if you pay a relatively high price to buy a nice house with a pool are you not entitled to charge high prices for rent during the peak summer period? It’s the same in other places where there is a high demand during peak times.

In my opinion the issue here isn’t the price but the unlicensed trade and the lack of tax paid. This is a familiar story in Ibiza and it all comes down to control. Allow for the creation of wealth but under strict conditions and ensure that the tax is paid. A controlled fair and free market should eventually steady prices, create wealth and increase taxes. Many homeowners may also decide to rent in an alternative manner once they are aware of the tax implications.

This island allows too many people the opportunity to come over for a few short months, earn vast amounts of money and not put one cent back into the system. That’s the problem, not whether somebody wants to pay a high price to sleep in a converted bus for a week.

6 thoughts on “Rip Off Ibiza? ”

Your view, Martin, seems to me to be limited: how about the working class of RESIDENTS (not tourists)? An example: A fully contracted teacher and his wife (she is working half days) have to leave their flat when the schools are finishing by end of June and may return to their flat by mid September after their flat has been rented to tourists for more money than they are paying for 9 months..
Would you like to be treated like that?!

I think there is a lot of misguided criticism around properties rented to tourists instead of locals, a part from the fact that this obeys to the laws of free market, the main problem is somewhere else: There is a massive shortage of new properties due to extremely restrictive laws for building. As an example more than 75% of land on the island is classified as suelo Rustico, you need more than 10000 square meters to build an unfamiliar house, ibiza s population density is a fifth of places like Malta, for example. Unless they relax those laws nothing will change…

What would hotel prices be if there were no low/mid market private rental? A shitty hotel room in Bossa already cost 200 Euros a night. As nobody can get a legal licence in the low/mid market that price would probably double if there were no private, illegal rental, and the island would become a millionaire’s playground only. Is that what the authorities want?